Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 27, 1990 TAG: 9003290598
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER
SOURCE: ELAINE VIEL SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: BLACK LENGTH: Medium
They will not be wearing those little white suits with red hearts on their chests and face masks and wielding a sword. They will be wearing work clothes and carrying tools to build real wire fences.
And when it is all over, Hank Maxey and Will Oliver hope that they will have reduced their foes to dust with their perfect 200-foot fence.
Oliver and Maxey, who will compete June 23 in New Zealand, hope they will wipe out their international competitors the same way they fenced out their competition at the National Collegiate Fence-Building Contest in Moultrie, Ga., late last year.
They scored 389 points out of a possible 425 in that competition.
The Oliver-Maxey team, who beat the defending collegiate champ, the University of Florida, and seven other schools, won the right to represent the United States at the world championships. This was the second year they competed in the national competition.
"Last year we finished fourth," Maxey said. He and Oliver were sponsored by the Block and Bridle Club at Tech.
The senior, animal science majors are no strangers to fencing, although before the national competition they did not have much experience working together.
In fact, they had never fenced together before winning the Georgia competition.
Most of the other teams in the international competition, who are from New Zealand, Australia and England, are made of guys who do this sort of thing for a living.
Maxey and Oliver plan to use the same system in New Zealand that worked so well for them in Georgia.
"We got together the night before and made a time schedule and decided who would do what and went from there," Oliver said.
And on the day before the national competition they helped to build a practice fence. The fence had to be straight and the steel strands had to have 200 to 250 pounds of tension.
The operation had to be completed in two hours or they would lose points. Maxey and Oliver ran a mere 20 minutes over the time limit.
While the basic rules will be the same in the New Zealand competition, there will be one big difference. There will be no predug holes in New Zealand.
Maxey, who is from Chatham, said he earns money building fences during the summers.
Maxey, who plans to attend graduate school, and Oliver, who has applied to the Virginia Tech veterinary school, say they are eager to do a little exploring of the New Zealand countryside during their 14-day stay there with their coach, Tech junior Jimmy Wade.
by CNB